Showing posts with label health benefits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health benefits. Show all posts

Sunday 18 November 2012

Trite Trivia: Dancing Makes You Smarter!

Upon unleashing my curiousity on the google search bar, I managed to come across an article written by a member of Stanford's social dance club.

You can read the article here

For those who don't know, dementia is the loss of thinking, memorising, and attentive ability as a person ages, and Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia.

Social partner dancing requires you to think on your feet, and that's how one can continue to use their brains and reduce the risk of getting dementia. While the article argues that the follows benefit the most from social dancing, I must say that this doesn't mean the leads don't benefit as much as the follows. In fact, in my opinion, leads benefit more, because they have to be able to adapt into the follow's position and movement, and whatever move they had in mind may have to be changed suddenly to ensure that the follow can get into a different position that the lead wants. Follows can also "switch off" their brain while dancing, if they aren't willing to play to the music and just stick to the basics (which is a personal problem when I dance West Coast Swing.) Therefore, in order to reap the benefits of maintaining a healthy brain, experiment more!

I must also say that tap jamming is also a great dance to keep your brains thinking. Some rapid fire decision making scenarios in tap jams include coming up with what technique to implement to the music, what to do in case there's less or extra sounds, and how to save your face in case you trip midway through a flash step. So, the benefits aren't just limited to partner work.